Spending time in the great outdoors is among the most popular fair weather leisure time activities. Quite often, cooking and eating a meal is made part of the outdoor activity. Whether it is a family gathering, at a picnic or just having a cookout, a great deal of time is spent around a barbeque grill. While no one will deny that barbequing food adds a flavor that cannot be beat, it does have some disadvantages. Probably the most prominent disadvantage of barbequing is that inadvertent flame ups from grease and oil can often burn and destroy the grilled food. Many users resort to an external spray container, flame extinguishers, or even a glass of water to extinguish such flame ups as they occur. However, these attempts often leaves water which commonly ends up upon the food being cooked thus contaminating it and perhaps ruining the taste as well or overly dampens the flame or heating element which can also lead to uneven or improperly cooked foodstuff.
Various attempts have been made in the past to overcome these disadvantages and provide a means of suppressing flame ups while barbeque grilling food, although the present invention substantially departs from the conventional solutions and in doing so provides a means by which flames can be suppressed or extinguished without damaging the quality of the foodstuff being grilled without the aforementioned problems. Among the relevant attempts to address these problems are several U.S. patents, including U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,756,140; 3,782,475; 5,351,760; 5,511,535; 6,386,093; and 6,631,712.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,362,586, issued in the name of Dedoes, describes a barbeque fan and fire quenching accessory comprising a hand held pressurized container with a nozzle and a battery powered fan which provides a stream of liquid and forced air to quench a flame during grilling.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,353,880, issued in the name of Green, describes a flame extinguisher system of a barbeque comprising a fluid discharge conduit having a plurality of apertures which force and delivers streams of water onto the heating element.
Additionally, ornamental designs for fire extinguishers for grills exist, particularly, U.S. Pat. No. D 372,560. However, none of these designs are similar to the present invention.
While these devices fulfill their respective, particular objectives, each of these references suffers from one (1) or more of the aforementioned disadvantages. Accordingly, there exists a need for a means by which the flame ups resulting from the grilling of foodstuffs can be easily extinguished without the disadvantages as described above. The development of the present invention fulfills this need.